


Learning Curve

by VanaTuivana



Series: Tales from the Learning Curve [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Humor, M/M, Magic, Mildly Dubious Consent, Original Universe, POV First Person, Sex Magic, Superpowers, hero/villain relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 17:15:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9617462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanaTuivana/pseuds/VanaTuivana
Summary: Kid Merlin, bona fide superhero, hates Commander Chaos, the world's fourth most reviled supervillain. That's never going to change.  Not even if Commander Chaos turns out to be ridiculously hot, surprisingly thoughtful, and in need of magical rescue once in a while.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liviania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liviania/gifts).



You should know right off the bat, I _hate_ Commander Chaos.

Okay, granted, most of the world hates Commander Chaos. Especially after the thing last year where he kidnapped all the housecats. The internet went crazy, and even after he returned them all once the government gave him those asterium crystals he demanded, he’s probably at least fourth or fifth on the list of most hated villains in the world. Behind Viola Vile and the Baboon Bandit, I’m sure, but he’s up there.

But I specifically hate Commander Chaos for making me look like an idiot in front of the team. I mean, there I was, on patrol with the Defenders of Democracy, flying along next to Captain Courageous and trying hard not to ogle his ass (I mean, I know he’s old, like probably at least thirty-five, but _damn_ , he’s smoking) when all of a sudden there was this explosion right by my ear and I shrieked like a small child and fell out of the sky.

Right in front of Captain Courageous!

I caught myself about ten feet off the ground, but it wasn’t graceful, and I swear Mercury Man laughed at me from Pegasus’s back. Like he has any room to criticize. He can’t even fly, and he’s a monumental tool.

Cap swooped down to check up on me. “Son,” he said (he always calls me ‘son’, it gives me a weird little thrill every time), “what’s wrong?”

“Uh,” I said, like an idiot, “should we not be concerned about that miniature explosion just now?”

They were all gathered around me by that time: Cap, Mercury Man, Lady Liberty, Pegasus, Annie Android. And they all looked at me like I was crazy. They hadn’t heard the explosion! I wasn’t crazy, and I told them so, but Mercury Man laughed at me again and I got mad, and Cap had to separate us before I threw a melting hex right into his stupid shiny silver nose.

“That’s enough, Kid Merlin,” he said, frowning. Cap frowning at you is about the worst feeling in the world, like having your favorite teacher AND your grandmother AND the President of the United States all disapproving of you at once. “Why don’t you head home for the night and get some rest. We can finish here without you. After all, it is a school night.”

I argued some, but I guess I sounded like a whiny kid at bedtime, because even Pegasus gave me a look. So that’s how I ended up off patrol duty, wandering through the city in the middle of the night in a rotten mood, kicking at rocks with my magic boots, and that’s how Commander Chaos cornered me alone in an alley.

He’s ridiculously fast, and okay, I should have been paying more attention. But one minute he wasn’t there, and the next he was lounging against the wall right in front of me.

“Well, well,” he said, in his villainous villain voice. “Look who’s out all by his lonesome. Isn’t it past your bedtime, little warlock? And on a school night, no less.”

I threw a fire hex at him out of instinct, which he dodged easily, so it went out harmlessly against the brick wall. Like I said, he’s fast. “I’m a _mage_ , actually,” I shot back. Terminology is important! Words have power! You’d think people would know that by now, especially after the thing with the Circle of Thirteen last fall.

Commander Chaos laughed and tossed something that looked like a glowing silver marble at me. I tried to cast a quick force field, even using up a green gem from my wristlet for extra power, but the marble was quicker than I was and it hit me in the chest, and all of a sudden every muscle from the neck down froze up. I couldn’t move an inch except for my head, which was an incredibly weird feeling.

He stalked closer, circling me like prey. “That’s a new invention of mine,” he said, sounding really proud of himself. “Instant freeze bubble. It’s great, right? So much more portable than a freeze ray, let me tell you. Anyway, there’s no need to glare so, little _mage_.” I was definitely glaring as hard as I could. “I’m not here to hurt you, and actually, I’m sorry about that little incident with your Defenders.”

“You made something explode in my ear!” I said, righteously indignant yet also a little bit relieved. I knew I wasn’t crazy, but it was good to have it confirmed. “What did you do that for, you jerk?”

“To get you alone,” he answered, like that was obvious. It wasn’t at all obvious. “I need your help, kid.”

“I’ll never help you in your evil schemes!” I said, extremely heroically. “Torture me as much as you want, but I will not betray the side of good!” Because, obviously, heroes do _not_ help villains. Sometimes villains help heroes, like when Cap recruits his archnemesis Doc Rotten to stop a greater evil, but _never_ the other way round.

He actually rolled his eyes at me and called me a dramatic teenager, which was not cool. _You_ try not being dramatic when you’re frozen stiff and a villain is prowling around you looking like he wants to eat you. And not in the sexy way.

Well, maybe in the sexy way, as it turned out later, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Anyway, it turned out that he had fallen afoul of Morgana, who _should_ have been my archnemesis by rights because we’re two sides of the same coin as descendants of legendary spellcasters, except that Princess Powerpunch claimed her before I got the chance because of what Morgana did to P.P.’s boon companion Diamond Dame. Which is just fine by me -- I’d honestly rather have a male nemesis anyway. Which I know sounds kind of sexist, but it’s just that when male heroes have female nemeses they’re kind of expected by the weight of tradition to hook up (e.g. Night-Man and the Feline Felon), and for obvious reasons, that’s not going to fly with me.

Right, so, Commander Chaos and Morgana had got into a spat over some dumb villain thing or other, and she’d laid a curse on him, and he needed me, because I use the same kind of magic she does, to break it before the magic turned ugly. Which was going to be at midnight, which was only like an hour and a half away at this point.

I mean, I’m pretty good at what I do, especially for an eighteen-year-old who’s only been doing this for a couple years with next to no formal training aside from that period outside of time and space I spent at Castle Magicka, but an hour to break a spell cast by _Morgana_ , who’s been sorceressing since before I was born? That was asking a lot even _if_ I agreed to help him.

“What kind of spell was it, anyway,” I couldn’t help asking. Professional curiosity, you know.

Commander Chaos looked shifty. Well, he always did, because he was a supervillain, but even more so. “I don’t know exactly, but it was about… it was during… uh, sex. So I kind of assumed it had something to do with that.”

“Oh,” I said. “ _Huh_.” Because, seriously, Commander Chaos and Morgana? Was not a team-up I would have expected, like, ever. In the streets _or_ between the sheets.

Even if, okay, she was famously gorgeous and he was… really hot. For a supervillain mad scientist. The stereotype is old, crazy hair, glasses, but as you know if you watch the news at all, Commander Chaos is pretty young, like probably not more than twenty-five, and he definitely works out. Like, he could almost give Cap a run for his money in the thighs department. He's got incredibly hot hair, dark and kind of artfully tousled, and his eyes are perfectly golden, like a hawk’s.

Not that I was staring at his eyes or anything. Or his ass when he turned.  
“Anyway,” he said pointedly. He might have been blushing a little, though it was hard to tell with dark skin like his. “The thing is, I need you to break the spell, and I need it done before midnight tonight, or something bad is going to happen. She was not specific as to what that bad thing is, and I was in no position to ask questions. Got me, kid?”

I sighed and deactivated my force field with a thought. Because the thing about being a heroic mage, even one who’s still in high school, is that you kind of _have_ to undo evil sorceresses’ spells, even when they’re cast on villains and total jerks like this guy. It comes with the territory. “Fine,” I said. “Let me free and I’ll see what I can do. Have you got someplace quiet we can do this? I don’t exactly do my best magic in alleyways.”

He grinned (he has perfect teeth, too, the utter _jerk_ ) and made a gesture that almost looked arcane until I realized he had a gadget on the palm of his glove and he was pressing a couple buttons. A spinning silver portal opened in the wall right in front of us.

“Wow,” I said. I couldn’t help being impressed. Yeah, I can do portals through time _and_ space, thanks very much, but doing one on the fly takes some _serious_ energy and at least two red gems to hold for more than a second or two, and here he was just pressing a couple buttons to make it work. Maybe I should look into the science side of things sometime.

Commander Chaos stepped up close and plucked the freeze-ray-marble thing off of my chest. All of a sudden I could move again, though my legs were numb and I stumbled without being able to feel my feet. He caught me and steadied me against his chest. (Which was broad and solid. Clearly mad-sciencing is a more active profession than I had previously realized.) “Sorry about this, kid,” he said, without actually sounding sorry. “It takes a couple minutes for the effects to wear off, and the portal only lasts thirty seconds. So.”

And he picked me up and slung me over his shoulder. Me! Kid Merlin, a full-fledged member of the Defenders of Democracy, the most powerful mage in this dimension, hauled around like a sack of potatoes by a supervillain!

But then again, from this perspective I had a great view of his ass as he strode through the portal. So I didn’t exactly protest. Sue me, I’m only human. (Mostly, anyway. Apparently being a descendant of Merlin makes you technically part dragon. Who knew? _I_ sure didn’t, until I faced off against Morgana for the first time and ended up actually breathing fire, but everybody knows that story so I won’t get into it again.)

I didn’t get the chance to look around until we got through the portal and he dumped me onto my feet. I was still feeling pretty unsteady, so I was kind of gripping his arms to stay upright.

“So,” Commander Chaos said again, looking at me expectantly while I clung to him. “How do you want to do this?”

“Um,” I said. I was way too close to those golden eyes to think straight. Danger, Will Robinson. I broke free and wobbled my way over to the nearest flat surface, which happened to be a lab table, and leaned on it. “Give me a sec. I need to be able to feel my fingers.”

He glanced at his watch, but didn’t say anything. Just lounged against the wall (seriously, why do hot supervillains look so _good_ while leaning casually against things?) and watched me while I tried to shake the tingling feeling out of my hands.

I took the opportunity to look around covertly with the vague thought of learning some important details that might come in handy the next time the Defenders needed to stop one of his nefarious plans. It was a secret lab, that was obvious, with all kinds of weird, ominous machinery and slimy things in specimen jars and a million computer monitors. I would have expected some evil henchmen or lab monkeys or something, but now that I thought about it, Commander Chaos always seemed to work alone. Which actually made all his evil deeds that much more impressive.

“Okay,” I said after a minute, when I was pretty sure that a) I had not gathered any useful information about where this lab actually was or what terrible things he was doing here and b) I had my baser instincts to climb him like a tree under control. “I’m going to try to find out what kind of magic we’re dealing with. Come over here, I’m going to need to put my hands on you. Again. For magical purposes.”

He unpeeled himself from the wall and sauntered over, pushing his hands into his pockets, to stand in front of me. “Go for it, kid.”

I lifted my hands, summoning up a thread of magic, and rested one hand over his heart. The heart was always a safe bet when it came to feeling out spells and curses. The other hand… well, since there was a non-zero chance this was sex magic, there was one obvious option, but I was a little wary of going there right away, so I pressed two fingers firmly against his carotid, closed my eyes, and whispered a little search-and-find hex.

His heart was beating steadily, perfectly timed to the rise and fall of his breath. I was drawn into his rhythm, feeling my own breathing slow and even out. His life force was ridiculously strong, and for a moment I just followed it through his body, searching out everything that seemed even a little out of place. There was magic in him, all right, wrapped around blood vessels, tangled through his nerves. Whatever this curse was, it had all the hallmarks of Morgana’s work, subtle and dark and unfairly enticing, and it would be a bear to tease out of him.

I pulled my consciousness out of his body and blinked up at Commander Chaos. “Wow,” I said, my mouth gone a little dry at the daunting task ahead of me. “What did you do to get on Morgana’s bad side? You must have _really_ pissed her off.”

He lifted one eyebrow into a perfect arch. “Apparently,” was all he said. “What are you going to do about it, little mage?”

“I don’t know yet. Shut up and let me figure that out.” He grinned down at me as I shifted both hands onto his chest (which was, let me say again, unfairly broad and firm) and pushed my spell deeper inside.

It was definitely old magic: it had that smell of blood and earth and just a bit of wet dog, and a weird pulsing red glowy feeling to it. I had to be careful not to let myself fall into that rhythm, though it drew me in like the drums of the druids. _Super_ old magic, then. And really powerful. Which is not so much the issue, because as Kid Merlin I’m basically topped up in the power department, but going after whatever Morgana did to him with brute force might actually make it explode. And that might make _him_ explode, or possibly turn into an eldritch horror, which would not be good. The other problem was that I still wasn’t exactly sure what the curse would _do_ , and I had limited time to find out.

I withdrew my consciousness back to my own body and dropped my hands, shaking out the tingles from the spell. “Okay. So good news, I _can_ do this, probably, but it’ll take some time and I’m gonna need some equipment.”

“Uh-huh. Eye of newt, that sort of thing?” he asked with every appearance of seriousness.

I gave him an unimpressed look. “A _computer_ to start with, genius.”

It’s been said that ninety percent of magic consists of simply knowing one extra fact, and that is absolutely true. In the olden days, wizards, witches, mages, enchanters, sorcerers, and other assorted magic-users had secret tomes filled with arcane knowledge. These days, it’s literally all online… if you know where to look. And since leaving Castle Magicka to pursue the self-educated-mage route here on Earth, I’d got pretty good at magical Googling. Which is a lot like normal Googling, only with a small charm involved to direct the I’m Feeling Lucky button to actually _be_ lucky. It’s complicated, but not actually all that difficult once you get the subtleties down.

Fifteen minutes later, with Commander Chaos being very distracting looking over my shoulder, I’d confirmed some of my suspicions and created a few more. The red glowy thing, as I’d thought, was _not_ good. Fortunately, I’d found an old homemade webpage that looked like it hadn’t been updated since 1996, but that had just the arcane knowledge I needed.

Unfortunately, that arcane knowledge confirmed that the only way to break sex magic was with more sex magic. It was _incredibly_ devious that way.

“Um,” I said, and turned to look at him. He looked at me. I was _definitely_ blushing, and my skin felt prickly and hot all over. “So. That’s that.”

He was looking pretty uncomfortable, and his eyes were actually starting to glow a little red. The rules of sex magic were less precise than some other branches of magic, but he’d seemed pretty certain that the curse was going live at midnight. And that seemed fittingly evil and dramatic for Morgana. I was pretty sure we still had another half hour or so to become okay with this. Honestly, I’m kind of shallow and he’s really hot, so I was pretty sure it wouldn’t even take me that long.

“Let me get this straight, kid,” he said, staring at the blinking sexy-witch animations on the screen. “Morgana put a _sex curse_ on me, and you still have no idea what it’s going to do, but you’re sure that the only way to undo it is for you to have magical sex with me, during which you can somehow pull the curse out of me and into yourself, which sounds extremely suggestive, by the way, and then we just hope you can neutralize it somehow with your own magic so _you_ don’t end up cursed? That sounds like a lot of risk. And why are we taking magic advice from a twenty-year-old homemade Geocities page that still has the digging man with the “under construction” sign, anyway?”

His tone made me pretty mad, like he knew anything about the mystic arts, and I spun the computer chair around to point at him. “Look, Commander Can’t-Keep-It-In-His-Pants, _you_ were the one who came to _me_ for help. And this is what I’ve got. The only other option is for me to try to smash the curse into oblivion while it’s still inside you, which has about an eighty percent chance of either killing you or turning you into a being of dark magical energy which I would then have to kill anyway before you end up possibly destroying the world. Your eyes are already going red, which in case you can’t tell is not a good thing. So you’re just going to have to deal with it. And so am I.”

Commander Chaos looked deeply conflicted, which was an unusual look on the face of a supervillain who literally just executes evil plans all day long. “You shouldn’t have to do this,” he said. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“I’m this realm’s most powerful mage,” I shot back. “It’s kind of my duty. Anyway, I’m eighteen, I’m gay, and I’m not a virgin. I can handle this. Can you?” I’m not really sure where I was getting all this fire from, honestly, and it was incredibly weird to be in the position of persuading a supervillain to fuck me to save his life and/or the world. They don’t tell you about this stuff in superhero orientation.

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking extremely thoughtful. “Okay, look, I’ve got about four questions. First, can we do this anywhere?”

I looked around the lab, a little baffled. There weren’t that many surfaces that looked comfortable -- lab tables, computer banks, those weird machines all over. My back ached just thinking about him bending me over one of those. “Yeah, I guess,” I said doubtfully. “I’ll just need about five feet of clear space to cast a containment sphere.”

He nodded decisively and went straight to one of the computer banks, punching in a code, and the floor slid open to reveal a staircase going down. Commander Chaos turned and extended a hand to me. “Come on then, little mage,” he said. His eyes were definitely getting redder, which meant there really wasn’t any time to waste, so I swallowed all my doubts and took his hand, and he led me down into his even more secret lab.

Which turned out not to be a lab at all, but his home. I didn’t have a lot of time to look around -- he took me straight into his bedroom (a pretty normal bedroom, fairly neat but otherwise not strange at all) and closed the door, and turned to look at me. “Second,” he said, “for the purposes of magic, what counts as sex? How far do we have to go? Do you have to get off? Do I? Does it help if we both do? And what about condoms? Are they going to block any magical energy or something?”

“Well, uh,” I said, preoccupied with the red light in those golden eyes. “I’m not exactly sure. It’s not like sex magic was on the curriculum where I trained. But since we don’t really have time to experiment, and more intimacy means I can draw on more power, I was thinking we should try for, uh… all the way. And condoms should be fine. I mean, they’re good. And important. Yeah.”

He nodded sharply and reached into his dresser drawer, rooting around in the back for a minute before pulling out a condom package and some packets of lube, which he tossed onto the bed. Points for being a prepared mad scientist, I guess? It did make me wonder, briefly, who he was bringing home to his secret lair. Other supervillains? Unsuspecting normals? Other super _heroes_?

“Third,” he said, drawing my attention away from that weird moment of jealousy, “It’d be strange to call you ‘Kid Merlin’ while we’re…” He waved at the bed. “What’s your name?”

I did hesitate for a minute, because not giving up your secret identity to the bad guys is, like, rule number one in the Defenders’ handbook. Then again, _none_ of this was out of the Defenders’ handbook. I was making up my own rules. “Damien,” I said at last.

He smiled just a little at that. “I'm Alex,” he said in turn. “Don’t spread it around. Fourth… can I kiss you?”

My eyes must have been Bambi-wide, because his smile widened, and for a moment he looked exactly like the wicked villain I’d thought he was an hour ago. He strolled forward, his confidence apparently regained, making me step back until he had me cornered against the wall. It was completely ridiculous how weak in the knees that made me. 

He didn’t do anything, though, obviously waiting for an answer, and I swallowed hard. “Yes?” I squeaked.

Commander Chaos -- _Alex_ \-- grinned and planted both hands on the wall on either side of my head. I was barely breathing, watching him move in, that red glow filling my vision. This close to him the magic pulsing within him was undeniably enticing, and when he leaned down and brushed his lips against mine I almost stopped thinking entirely. My hands came up of their own accord, clinging to his broad shoulders, and for a second he was drawing me in, my consciousness tangled with the beat of those druid drums inside him.

He drew back after just a second, looking fairly pleased with himself. “That wasn’t so bad, little mage. Weren’t you going to make a containment circle?” he asked.

“Um,” I said again, feeling a little bit drunk on that dark, sweet power. Shit, this was going to be harder than I thought just keeping myself from falling to the dark. “Yeah.” I pushed away from him, shaking my head to clear it. “You just… stay inside it. Don’t move too much or I’ll have to start all over.”

He sat obediently on the bed, watching as I walked slowly around it and placed seven white crystals from my pouch, muttering the incantation under my breath. This, at least, was a spell I knew well enough to do practically in my sleep, or while being distracted by a supervillain who was currently engaged in peeling off his costume. _Damn_ him.

I stepped back and made the finishing gesture, and a globe of white light sprung up, enclosing the two of us inside. I turned to Commander -- _Alex_ \-- just as he slid his shirt off.

He wasn’t built like Cap, with his superstrength and constant benchpressing of firetrucks and things, but his arms were toned and his chest was broad and a little hairy. He had at least a four-pack, which is definitely more than I can say, and I hugged myself while I stared at him, a little bit embarrassed. Look, magery doesn’t exactly emphasize nice musculature, okay? Not like mad sciencing apparently does.

“All done?” he asked, and patted the bed next to him. “Come here.”

I crawled onto the wide bed, stopping a foot away from him, and he rolled his eyes and scooped me into his lap. “Don’t be shy, Damien,” he said, like he was tasting my name and liking it. “I’m not going to hurt you. Okay?”

I nodded and took a deep breath, but before I could say anything he kissed me again, and not just a gentle brush of lips this time. This was deep and hot and intense, flooding me with the red light, and by the time I knew what was happening he had got his hands up my costume shirt and was sliding it up.

My head only cleared a little when he pulled back to shed my shirt entirely, but that didn’t last long: he was there kissing me again, his hands sliding down to knead at my ass through my pants, and I was rubbing back against him. My body had clearly got with the program and my mind was trailing far behind.

But I was supposed to be doing magic here, not letting him sweep me away into dark magic and madness, so I reared my head back and broke away. “Time,” I said thickly. “What time is it?”

He tipped his head to see the clock. His lips were swollen already. “Quarter to,” Alex breathed, and lowered his head to nip at my neck. “You all right?”

I couldn’t help but moan in answer and squirm against him. My tights were feeling tighter, too constricting, and when he reached down to undo them I pushed a hand between us to help. We got tangled together until I whispered a vanishing spell into his hair, targeting both my pants and his, and then there was nothing but heat and that growing pulsing of the red light between us.

It was only a few moments before he had me on my back, my legs hiked up around his hips as we ground together. I was trying hard to focus on gathering the magic up and siphoning it into my own power store. Every kiss, every inch his wandering hands covered, every shudder as he ground down against me fed another waft of intoxicating power into me.

“Damien,” he said again, breathless. “What -- what’s happening?”

I looked up to see not only his eyes glowing red, but wisps of it coming out of his mouth, his nose, like fire trying to escape. “Shit,” I said, and hastily reached for the lube. “A-Alex, we’ve got to do this now. Condom, get the condom.”

“Okay, okay,” he breathed. And he rolled off of me to rip open the package, as I slicked my fingers up messily and pushed them inside.

Confession time: I said I wasn’t a virgin, and that was true, but I wasn’t exactly all that experienced either. One fumbling handjob with another apprentice at Castle Magicka. One hasty blowjob on my high school football captain last year. A whole lot of self-experimentation. And, a couple months ago, I let Laser Boy, who’s only a sidekick but is really hot anyway, do some experimenting on me for a few fun but ultimately unsatisfying weeks. So yeah, I’d done this, but only a couple times. And never while trying to suck a curse out of somebody at the same time. My only saving grace was that if I was awful, I could blame it entirely on saving his life.

Alex slid back between my legs, his gorgeous (seriously, gorgeous is the only word) cock in his hand. He was watching me finger myself, looking slightly dazed, with the red glow still coming out of his face, and I had to reach down with slippery fingers to grab his cock ( _gorgeous_ ) before he would focus. “Come on,” I told him, valiantly keeping my voice from wavering. “Do it now. We don’t have much time.”

He drew in a shuddering breath and nudged his way in, carefully, which I really appreciated. But we had to finish this before midnight, so I screwed up my eyes and _shoved_ up toward him, and he groaned and sank deep inside.

From then on it was nothing but an overwhelming rush of power, that red glow pulsing in my and around me and through me, the rhythm swallowing me up. I could hardly hear myself chanting through the roar of that dark magic as he pushed in and out of me in the same rhythm, helping to guide the spell, whether he knew it or not. I was a well of red light, spilling over into the containment circle, drawing in and in and in until I couldn’t hold any more, and then finding deeper reserves inside myself and filling those too.

Finally there was no more light outside, just the pulse that had taken over my entire body. An immense pressure, making me lighter than a balloon, filling me to bursting. I could feel it fighting to control me, but seriously -- I’m _Kid Merlin_. If there’s one thing I know, it’s control of immense power.

I wrestled with it, senseless to anything else. It was old magic, older than almost anything in this realm, and it wanted to be set free. I built boxes inside boxes to contain the curse, constructing a prison for it inside the well of my own power, and once that was contained I squeezed it smaller and smaller. I bore down on it with every bit of willpower I possessed, whispering spell after spell of diminishing, of containment, of nullification, every syllable I’d ever learned that might help.

The curse fought back, still, and the taste of blood was thick in my mouth as I wrestled to wrap it in my own power. It resisted -- it was overcome -- I pushed it deep down into the well --

\-- and then it all went still. I opened my eyes.

I couldn’t hear Alex at first, but I could see my name on his lips as he shook my shoulder, wiped the tears from my cheeks. His eyes were back to his normal gold, his cheeks were flushed, and he looked awed. I smiled, and passed out.

When I woke up, the containment circle had dispersed, and I was lying in bed dressed in clothes that definitely weren’t mine -- they were a couple sizes too big -- and Alex (he’d have to go back to being _Commander Chaos_ now, of course) was whistling down the hall. I straggled up out of bed, feeling about ninety years old with all the aches and pains that come from using so much magic in so short a time. Also, probably, from getting thoroughly fucked by a supervillain, that might also be part of it.

He was in his kitchen, flipping pancakes, and he smiled at me, looking much too cheerful. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” he said.

“Urgh,” I said. “How long was I out?”

“Twelve hours precisely,” he said. “It’s noon now. Want breakfast?”

I nodded, but then realized -- it was a Monday. I panicked automatically. I’m a good student, okay? “School! I’m missing school!”

“Relax, little mage,” he said, “I called in sick for you.” He laughed at my expression. “You know, there aren’t that many high schools in the area, and their databases are supremely hackable. Don’t worry, I’m not going to use your secret identity against you. I play fair.”

I was still fairly uneasy, both about a supervillain knowing my secret identity and about missing school, but I wasn’t really feeling up to booking it home from wherever we were to change and pick up my backpack and head in for half a day of my least favorite classes. Hey, I probably saved the world from an eldritch curse last night -- I’m entitled a skip day. So I sat down at the table, and then winced, because I sat down too hard. Alex looked fairly smug at that.

He slid a plate of pancakes across the table toward me, and I attacked them like a ravenous wolf. I was legitimately _starving_. Again, all that use of power. And also, probably, the sex.

“So about last night,” he said, while I was in the middle of a huge bite, and I tried my best not to choke. “Thanks. That was…” He shook his head. “Incredible. In more ways than one.”

I swallowed and blushed, sinking down in my chair. “Well… good,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed, and smiled across at me. He looked more open in the light of day, in casual clothes rather than his supervillainous costume. He was still and always hot, but he also looked… normal. _Nice_ , even. “So, I was thinking. In light of the things we know about each other now… how would you like to go out with me some time?”

I laid down my fork and stared at him.

“Like on a date,” he clarified after I’d been speechless for a good minute. “Because as great as that ended up being last night, it wasn’t exactly romantic. And I think we should try that.”

“Me, go out with you,” I said slowly, trying to process this. “Kid Merlin, go out with Commander Chaos?”

“No,” he said, and grinned at me across the table. “Damien, go out with Alex.”

~~~

I _hate_ Commander Chaos. Still. Always. That's my duty as Kid Merlin, bona fide superhero, savior of the entire world in ways that normal people can't know about.

But Alex? He’s actually kind of great.


End file.
